>>>.. The production of the docile body through internalized discipline
>>>whose emergence Foucault wrote of seems to be becoming a thing
>>>of the past. Newly respectable racist politics and the triumphant
>>>bourgeoisie may have made a Foucauldian analysis obsolete in this
>>>respect. Much has changed since the time when Foucault was
>>>writing _Discipline and Punish_.
>
>When I first joined this list I asked if any Foucauldian (or is it
>Foucaultian?) had written on the evolution of the U.S. "criminal justice"
>system, which long ago left behind liberal notions of reformation for pure
>brutality, warehousing, and revenge. We now have crowds baying for blood
>outside prisons on execution nights (though the prisoner is inside, viewed
>only by a handful of lucky guests). No one answered. I'll try again.
Doug,
it's a complex question: power is never static, so of course, Yoshie,
many things have changed since Foucault wrote _Discipline and Punish_.
But let us remember the point of that book: to identify the general
tendency at a specific moment in historical time (the faultline of the
18th/19th century), and the subsequent development of a certain range of
modalities of power that characterise, but need not be taken to encapsulate
modern existence as a whole. To be sure, the only reason why Foucault
would write such a book was to engage with the present (the late
1960s/early 1970s); he said as much many times, and directly in respect to
the writing of _Discipline and Punish_. So your question, Doug, is a valid
one; for the general picture drawn of corrective social discipline was one
that was useful in the context of Foucault's own struggles. He was
obviously worried more (at least at the time of writing) about the taming
of individuals than their state sanctioned killing. His immediate concern,
however, need not imply that the general tendency identified in the book
(the move from the marking of bodies to the reforming of souls) had or
would come to dominate, either in reality or in Foucault's opinion, every
compartment of the penal/social system. Because Foucault thought it
important to point out that beneath humanism's concerns for the tortured
body lurks a more subtle and tyrannical desire to bring that body to order
need not imply that he himself held that modern society was moving
irrevocably on a path toward an ideal of total tranquility. The very
writing of the book itself disproves this, quite apart from the fact that
much of its latter half discusses the failure of the reformist movement.
Above all what Foucault was attune to was instability within prevalent
rationalities and practices of power, precisely of the kind both yourself
and Yoshie identify. As Foucault would so often suggest, power is not
linear but in flux, not fixed but dynamic, in contest; certainly not
shielded from historical and specific forces and counter-forces operating
within a society (like the intensification of relations of capital since
the mid 1970s, the rise of fundamentalisms, militias and extreme forms of
identity through the early to late 1980s and into the 1990s, etc .. the
types of phenomena that might refocus the penal gaze on the body). There
may be a general tendency, but all kinds of other intensities exist beneath
the surface, under the silent trajectory that turns out later to be the
history of a given culture. Foucault might well have written a very
different book had he been alive now to do it, but that doesn't invalidate,
or render only partially relevant the book that he wrote; for the
technologies of power he described therein persist - albeit in a different
context - alongside others that Foucault would probably be the first to
admit, never quite 'disappeared'.
All this said, we might note that more convicted criminals are
sucessfully reintegrated than executed, and despite the enormous numbers,
far more never make it to prison than those who do. The society of correct
training hasn't entirely been displaced. Goodness knows how many people
will get up and sucessfully go to work this very morning ..
ian
_____________________________________________________
Ian Robert Douglas,
Watson Institute of International Studies,
Brown University, Box 1831,
130 Hope Street,
Providence, RI 02912
tel: 401 863-2420
fax: 401 863-2192
"The powerful imagination creates the event"
Michel de Montaigne
>>>whose emergence Foucault wrote of seems to be becoming a thing
>>>of the past. Newly respectable racist politics and the triumphant
>>>bourgeoisie may have made a Foucauldian analysis obsolete in this
>>>respect. Much has changed since the time when Foucault was
>>>writing _Discipline and Punish_.
>
>When I first joined this list I asked if any Foucauldian (or is it
>Foucaultian?) had written on the evolution of the U.S. "criminal justice"
>system, which long ago left behind liberal notions of reformation for pure
>brutality, warehousing, and revenge. We now have crowds baying for blood
>outside prisons on execution nights (though the prisoner is inside, viewed
>only by a handful of lucky guests). No one answered. I'll try again.
Doug,
it's a complex question: power is never static, so of course, Yoshie,
many things have changed since Foucault wrote _Discipline and Punish_.
But let us remember the point of that book: to identify the general
tendency at a specific moment in historical time (the faultline of the
18th/19th century), and the subsequent development of a certain range of
modalities of power that characterise, but need not be taken to encapsulate
modern existence as a whole. To be sure, the only reason why Foucault
would write such a book was to engage with the present (the late
1960s/early 1970s); he said as much many times, and directly in respect to
the writing of _Discipline and Punish_. So your question, Doug, is a valid
one; for the general picture drawn of corrective social discipline was one
that was useful in the context of Foucault's own struggles. He was
obviously worried more (at least at the time of writing) about the taming
of individuals than their state sanctioned killing. His immediate concern,
however, need not imply that the general tendency identified in the book
(the move from the marking of bodies to the reforming of souls) had or
would come to dominate, either in reality or in Foucault's opinion, every
compartment of the penal/social system. Because Foucault thought it
important to point out that beneath humanism's concerns for the tortured
body lurks a more subtle and tyrannical desire to bring that body to order
need not imply that he himself held that modern society was moving
irrevocably on a path toward an ideal of total tranquility. The very
writing of the book itself disproves this, quite apart from the fact that
much of its latter half discusses the failure of the reformist movement.
Above all what Foucault was attune to was instability within prevalent
rationalities and practices of power, precisely of the kind both yourself
and Yoshie identify. As Foucault would so often suggest, power is not
linear but in flux, not fixed but dynamic, in contest; certainly not
shielded from historical and specific forces and counter-forces operating
within a society (like the intensification of relations of capital since
the mid 1970s, the rise of fundamentalisms, militias and extreme forms of
identity through the early to late 1980s and into the 1990s, etc .. the
types of phenomena that might refocus the penal gaze on the body). There
may be a general tendency, but all kinds of other intensities exist beneath
the surface, under the silent trajectory that turns out later to be the
history of a given culture. Foucault might well have written a very
different book had he been alive now to do it, but that doesn't invalidate,
or render only partially relevant the book that he wrote; for the
technologies of power he described therein persist - albeit in a different
context - alongside others that Foucault would probably be the first to
admit, never quite 'disappeared'.
All this said, we might note that more convicted criminals are
sucessfully reintegrated than executed, and despite the enormous numbers,
far more never make it to prison than those who do. The society of correct
training hasn't entirely been displaced. Goodness knows how many people
will get up and sucessfully go to work this very morning ..
ian
_____________________________________________________
Ian Robert Douglas,
Watson Institute of International Studies,
Brown University, Box 1831,
130 Hope Street,
Providence, RI 02912
tel: 401 863-2420
fax: 401 863-2192
"The powerful imagination creates the event"
Michel de Montaigne